


Foundlings

by Not_You



Series: one only understands the things that one tames [32]
Category: Captain America: Winter Soldier, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Avengers Tower foster care, Child Abuse, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Christianity used for evil purposes, Cults, F/M, Healing, M/M, Mathematics, POV Outsider, Playgrounds, Racism, Red Room, Rescue, Secret Identity, Sexism, raised as the wrong dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 15:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1555064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a doomsday cult tries to replicate the Red Room's success.  Our heroes rescue their two prototypes, and are left wondering what to do about this pair of extremely troubled children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last planned work in the series. If you have any questions or notice anything I've forgotten about, just let me know.

Phil has seen a lot of horrible things in his time and has helped his boy deal with even more, but Clint's call is still a shock. He sounds like he's shaking, and Phil doesn't even check the time because he can feel that it's four o'clock in the morning.

“Boss?”

“Right here, boy. What do you need?”

“We need help. We're on our way back right now, and...” He takes a deep breath and starts over from the top. Apparently the serum isn't the only thing people have seen in action and tried to duplicate. Phil listens in cold horror as Clint describes the headquarters of the apocalypse cult the Avengers have been battling for the past six months. Phil has seen the Red Room notes, and apparently so have the Children of the Revelation. Hidden deep within the compound were a pair of children known as Adam and Eve, subjected to a training regimen based on the one used on Natasha and her peers. “So we've got them aboard the jet with us and I don't know what in the hell we're going to do with them.”

Phil doesn't know, either, but comforts his sub and is at the tower to meet the team when they arrive. Steve leads the way, looking worried, and behind him comes Natasha, the kids sticking close to her. The rest of the team looks dazed, especially post-transformation Bruce where he leans on Tony, and Phil feels much the same. They're so little. The boy is seven at the outside, and the girl can't be a day over five. She's wearing a collar, which makes Phil shudder. No preadolescent sub wears a collar. At the very most, parents will sometimes put decorative ribbons on sub children for formal occasions, but even that is old-fashioned. And this is a real leather collar, fitted and buckled and with a heavy, slave-style tag with an alpha symbol on it. It's horrible, and made a thousand times worse by the girl actually being black. She's the polar opposite of her companion, a towhead who looks around with pale blue eyes. He's wearing the arm cuffs of a bonded dom from the middle ages, which look heavy and wrong on his skinny arms, and Phil feels like crying. More than anything he wants to take those heavy, ugly things off the kids, but he can tell it would throw them into a panic.

“So!” Steve says, forcibly bright. “Adam and Eve will be staying with us for now.”

Phil nods. “I see.” He crouches to be at eye level with the kids. “Hi. You're going to be comfortable here.” He's not surprised when they just stare back for a long moment, but he is surprised when the girl speaks.

“Together?”

“You mean want to stay with Adam?”

She nods, very cautiously. “Okay,” Phil says. “That will be fine.”

“Of course it will,” Steve adds, and for the next two hours Steve, Natasha, Clint and Phil are making Natasha's guest room as comfortable as possible. The children trust her the most, because she actually understands some of what they've been through. She gives them clear orders, and explains what they are and are not allowed to do in painstaking detail as Phil makes the bed and Clint brings a few big t-shirts that will function as smocks for the children in the immediate future, because the strange pajama type things they're wearing are filthy with dried blood and unidentifiable grime. They stand silently and listen to Natasha, and then Adam takes Eve by the collar, leading her to the bathroom and letting her go in and bathe first. He waits outside, and eventually Eve emerges, kneeling to him as he goes in for his turn. There's nothing playful about it, and Phil feels sick again. Children shouldn't act like this.

Once both of the children are clean, they lurk by the bathroom door wrapped in towels, looking heartbreakingly suspicious. “Here,” Clint says, crouching and offering them two t-shirts. “You can wear these until we wash your clothes, okay?”

They stare for a long time, and then Eve says, “Okay,” and suddenly cringes, while Adam's little face takes on a pinched, uncomfortable look that's somehow naggingly familiar. Clint, bless him, doesn't react at all. He just holds still and waits for the kids to unfreeze. Eve looks to the Adam, and he reaches forward, looking terrified. None of them breathe as Adam takes the shirts. One is a neon-green piece of Hulk merchandise and the other is black with a purple cartoon cat on it. Adam stands there with one in each hand, weighing them as if everything in the world depends on who wears which shirt. At last he gives the cat to Eve, and points to the bathroom. She bows and goes in, coming out a moment later looking both better and worse. The collar is even more of an insult this way, but the shirt is very cute on her. Adam ducks into the bathroom and emerges just as quickly. He takes Eve's hand, and something about the movement is completely off. All these little signals are driving Phil crazy, because he knows that he has seen them before, just not where.

“All right,” Natasha tells the kids, her voice steady and gentle, “now that you're clean and dressed, it's time to sleep. Would you like to eat first?”

Eve nods, and Adam clings her hand and squeaks, “Yes. We would.”

“We'll be happy to fix you something,” Natasha assures the kids, shepherding them to the kitchen where Steve greets them with a broad and slightly desperate smile, and asks them what they'd like. That turns out to be a mistake, and they both have a little shuffling, stamping, and squalling meltdown at having to make a decision, but Steve saves the day by making them each a grilled cheese sandwich. This choice turns out to be bland and familiar enough, but also a treat. Adam and Eve gobble them down, and split a third one when Steve makes it. Natasha treats them like feral cats, pointedly not watching them eat, and Phil follows her example.


	2. Chapter 2

Adam and Eve slowly get used to life in the tower. Child Protective Services visit, but acknowledge that the children are better off remaining where they are. Not only are there some very dangerous people who want them dead, but no conventional foster care situation could possibly understand their background. They do insist on therapy sessions, and Steve makes sure the children go to them and provides home-cooked meals and the presence of a gentle dom.

Two weeks go by and the children are still wearing their collar and cuffs, which look worse than ever against the cute little outfits Pepper has bought them with Tony's money. It makes Phil's hands itch with the urge to take them off and the urge to kill everyone responsible, but even bringing it up scares them, and any time they feel threatened Adam shrinks back a little and Eve steps up, head tipped down like she's waiting to be hit and wants to take the blow at her hairline where the skull is strongest. It's awful, and feels like a cold hand around Phil's heart.

There are good things happening too, though. Both of the kids are used to sparring and weapon training for hours every day and while they haven't been weaned off of it, Bucky and Natasha are making it more fun. Adam and Eve are starting to learn that a mistake doesn't mean painful punishment, and that when they fight against each other Eve doesn't have to let him win.

Other than fighting and the cult's bizarre dogma of male Aryan ascendancy, the kids' education has been completely neglected, and Steve always makes time to read to them. It's heartbreaking to see how spellbound they look and how upright they sit, soaking it up because they can't believe it's a part of their life now. Phil and Clint both join in the effort, and even Tony puts in the occasional shift, including being the first one to read them Goodnight, Moon, which they love. Watching them in action, Phil is coming to suspect that they love anything without dynamics in it.. They're also fascinated by Tony's switching, and all of it finally crystallizes for Phil in the shower, as so many things have done over the years.

“Clint!” He yells, bursting out dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, his hair turned into a stupid-looking semi-combover thing by the water. 

“Boss?” Clint yelps, jumping up from the couch and muting the TV in one motion.

“I know what's wrong with the kids!”

“Uh, beyond the obvious?”

“Yes! Remember how I said the way Adam acts reminds me of something?”

“Yeah?”

“Two words, one proper name: Justin. Hammer.”

“...Holy shit, you're right.”

The kids hate the blood tests, of course. It's too much like being back at the compound. The Children of the Revelation believe in the utter subjugation of subs, to an extent that pretty much every sub Phil has ever met would find demeaning, and they also believe the tertiary blood factors are physical manifestations of sin. Luckily for Adam and Eve they don't have much of any of the tertiary groups. There's more of the stuff in the bloodstream of the average switch than in doms or subs as a general rule, which probably has something to do with it. The big difference this week, though, is that the techs doing the tests have no vested in interest in subordinating black people to white ones or females to males.

There are times Phil hates being right, and this is one of them. Eve has blood in her D-factor stream, and Adam is awash in s-factor. Their therapist gently explains what this means at their next session, and Phil isn't surprised when the kids have a complete and utter meltdown, screaming and crying and hiding behind the furniture. It's Natasha who coaxes them out.

“It's not nice that the Children of the Revelation lied to you,” she says, an exhausted, tear-streaked child on either side of her, “but you don't have to act differently if you don't want to.”

For another two weeks they don't, and then they're climbing on the jungle gym Tony has of course already built for them when Eve's big tag snags on one of the bars. She stops, chokes, and then scrabbles at the collar, getting it unbuckled before Bucky can even climb up to help.

“There!” She yells, throwing it down to clash against the floor, sticking her tongue out at the fallen collar before climbing higher. Adam is staring at her with huge eyes, and flinches almost hard enough to fall when Bucky starts to laugh.

“Good job, Eve!” He calls, and she waves from the top of the gym, so bright-eyed and pretty without the thing getting in her way and insulting her skin. Adam still looks scared, but he climbs up to join her. With the self-assurance of a very dominant dom, Eve is dealing with her change in status much better than her companion is. Bucky turns his back so Adam can lean on Eve without worrying about being berated for failing to act like a proper dom. As if little kids should even be worrying about such a thing. Phil comes in after both children are calm again, and Bucky casually picks up the discarded collar while Adam chases Eve around and around the structure, the pair of them moving like lemurs.

“We should probably hang onto that for her, as much as I want to incinerate it,” Phil says, and Bucky chuckles.

“You and me both, sir. But the past is important.”

“True,” Phil says, and laughs when the kids swing down to land lightly on the mats and to cautiously hug Phil. He crouches to return it, very grateful that instead of quiet white men in suits, the children's trainers had been a variety of people in grey Revelation pajamas. It's wonderful to know that the organization is broken now, the rank-and-file being rehabilitated and deprogrammed while those responsible are wasting away in prison. “Hey, guys,” he says, pulling back to look into the kids' faces. “I was wondering if you wanted to come and learn some more math, because I have some time.” They both light up, always glad to learn more about anything that was neglected before.

“With counters?” Eve asks, and Phil smiles at her.

“Yes, dear. With counters.” Eve crows happily and takes one of Phil's hands, and after a shy moment, Adam takes the other. Eve is fascinated by the colorful translucent plastic disks Phil found in a school supply store for teaching counting, and Adam seems to like them too.


	3. Chapter 3

Having the pitter-patter of little feet around the tower is deeply engrossing, even for Tony, who keeps claiming not to like children while lavishing the ones living with him all the affection they can stand. Natasha has given up even trying to hide how much she adores the children, and when Eve's hair grows out from its close crop to become a black cloud around her face, Natasha is the one Eve trusts enough to let her oil and braid it. It's dry from the Children of the Revelation's obsessive ablutions, and Natasha works pure extra virgin olive oil into it before making about ten chunky braids. Eve has a lot of hair, but Natasha doesn't make her sit through the time it would take. Trained for assassination or not, Eve is still only five and a half, with Adam just a year older according to one of the best pediatric dentists in the country. She's happy to jump up and go over to demand a story from Phil. 

He's actually doing paperwork, but assures her that he will do two more forms and then stop long enough to read her a book. She's not best pleased with this, but consoles herself with an apple. The children are still unsure about most new foods, but sweet fruits have won them over entirely. She's nibbling on the core when the door opens. She glances up, and then hides behind Natasha, eyes huge.

“Uh, hey?” Sam says, hesitating at the threshold.

“Come in,” Phil says, “Steve will be back soon.” He and Adam are swimming, Steve the only person Adam trusts not to hold him under if he splashes too much. Sam comes in and sets a box on the table, ignoring Eve with the instinct of a man who has worked with traumatized animals of many kinds. In addition to helping veterans adjust, Sam also helps to rehabilitate injured raptors. He has said that the resemblance is sometimes uncanny.

“Cool, I'm bringing back some books he loaned me. And bringing food because I'm secretly somebody's mama in disguise.”

“It's one of the things we love about you,” Natasha assures him, watching as Sam opens the box and floods the kitchen with the smell of yellow cake. Home made, old-fashioned, real butter and eggs all the way, and ganache on top.

“That's beautiful,” Phil says, and Sam laughs.

“Fresh, too. I think Steve will forgive us if we cut it without him.”

“He'd better,” Natasha says, and gets up, Eve hanging onto the hem of her shirt with one hand, the other thumb crammed into her mouth. “I'm having milk. Gentlemen?” They both request the same and so does Eve. Sam smiles at her, and she stares at him for a long moment as Natasha pours three big glasses of milk and one small one.

“I can't tell what you are,” Eve says, sounding very put out by it.

Sam just laughs. “That's because I'm a neutral, honey. I'm neither.”

In an excellent demonstration of how far she has come, Eve doesn't panic or get angry. She does start asking a lot of questions, and Sam answers each one in turn because he has the patience of a saint. Midway through the process Steve and Adam come in, damp and happy. Adam meeps and hides behind Steve at the sight of Sam, but with Eve chattering away happily to the interloper, it takes Adam much less time to decide that Sam is all right. Steve is of course always delighted to see a friend and always delighted to see an old-fashioned cake, beaming as he throws his and Adam's towels into the laundry before pouring them each some milk and settling down to an enormous slice.

“So, how'd you like the Shadow?”

“I can dig it. He's an actual anti-hero.”

“They kept some of that in the radio drama.”

“It was sort of weird reading him without psychic powers.”

Phil bites his tongue to keep from saying anything about the biography that lists some of the books found among Captain America's personal effects.

“I sort of wish that hadn't gotten so big.”

“Melinda likes him better with powers, but isn't so big on the Orientalism of it all.”

“Melinda?” Steve asks, and Sam grins.

“Woman I'm seeing. Older than me, Asian, complete badass.”

“...Wait a minute,” Phil says. “Melinda May?”

“Yeah, you know her?”

“She works for me.”

“Oh. Uh, hi.” He gives a feeble little wave, and Steve laughs.

“She know your dynamic?”

“That's the best part!”

“I've always hoped Melinda would find a nice neutral man,” Phil says, grinning.

By the end of his visit Sam is well-tolerated by both children, and they get to know him better in the ensuing months. As therapy and day-to-day life in a loving home have their usual effect, Child Protective Services start making noises about adoption or a more conventional foster arrangement. Seeing the fierce, possessive, and intimately familiar look that comes into Natasha's eyes when the idea of the children going somewhere else is floated, Phil gets an idea.

Nick has yet to meet the kids, but Mark and Elisabeth Nichols may be just the right adoptive parents. Natasha is already so devoted to the kids that Nick has been giving his new neighbors some line about an injured friend who needs help getting around and cooking for herself to explain why his sub has basically abandoned him. To be completely fair, Maria is resting up from a broken leg incurred during the raid on the Children of the Revelation's compound and Natasha has helped her a little, but she's seeing some lawyer crazy enough about her to take personal leave to help her out. He's blind, but has already learned to navigate Maria's house just fine.

Natasha calls Nick that night, asking him to come and meet the children. He arrives two days later, and takes to the kids immediately. He likes Eve's fearlessness when she marches up to him and demands to know if he's a good dom to Natasha, and he likes the sweet-natured way Adam tells her not to hurt Nick's feelings.

One of the only good things about Adam and Eve's upbringing is that the understand secret identities. When they meet Mark and Elisabeth Nichols for the first time, they're friendly but cautious.


	4. Chapter 4

It turns out that the injured friend wasn't a complete truth, but Faye can't blame her neighbors for not trumpeting it around that they were trying to adopt. So many things fall through, and she's so happy for them when the children come home. Her own kids have questions, and she and Darell answer all that they can, telling them to be friendly and polite to their new neighbors, and not to ask about their biological parents or too much of what had happened before.

“Questions like 'what's your favorite color?' are all right, but asking about the past might remind them of bad things, because the people they were living with were mean to them,” Darrell says for Patrice's benefit. The other children are a good deal older because Patrice was a surprise baby, and have some idea what the phrase 'child abuse' actually means.

“Okay,” Patrice says, climbing into his father's lap. 

Darrell smiles and hugs him. “Just be your sweet self, little guy.” Patrice just giggles, and Leila and Dani both grin.

“We'll be nice to the new kids, Mom,” Dani assures her, and Faye smiles.

“See that you do.” She knows that Dani won't be too nice, taking her role as older sister and only dom very seriously. If the kids are the kind of troubled that set fires and torture little animals, Dani will tell on them.

On the actual first day the kids just watch through the fence, and Adan and Chava stare back. It's Faye's turn to cook dinner, and she can just see them from the kitchen window, following Elisabeth into the house. They're lovely children, a little blue-black girl and a ghostly white boy, both of them a year or two older than Patrice. They walk hand-in-hand, and she smiles when Mark sweeps into the house after them in that protective way she knows so well.

The children, bless their hearts, don't approach their new neighbors until Saturday, when they walk over after breakfast. Faye is long past worrying about anything happening to them there. Two weeks ago when the Hendersons's son had been harrassed at the bus stop by some older doms, Mark had gone with the boy to the bus stop the next day and had put the fear of God into them, as well as getting their full names for the Hendersons to call the school principal. There hasn't been any trouble since.

Faye isn't all that surprised when her phone rings shortly before she told the kids to be back for lunch. It's Elisabeth. “Hello?”

“Hello, ma'am. The children were wondering if they could stay for lunch, and we certainly don't mind.”

“Not a bit. Don't give Patrice cow's milk, though. It gives him a stomach ache.”

“Duly noted, ma'am. We have three kinds of juice, he's bound to like one.”

Faye smiles. “Probably all of them.”

“And when would you like them back, ma'am?”

“They know to be here at four-thirty to help make dinner, it's what we do every day.”

“Okay, ma'am.”

“And how are your kids settling in, dear?”

“Better for having yours around, ma'am. Chava and Patrice have apparently decided to be best friends, and your girls have been very nice to Adan.”

“Wonderful,” Faye says, meaning it some of the most she ever has in her life. “I've got to go, but I'm glad to hear they're doing well.”

Faye and Darrell are a pretty stereotypical couple in some ways. One of them is that Darrell does all the mending while Faye fixes everything that isn't made of fabric. She has today set aside to tackle Darrell's honey-do list, and because they have three kids there's a lot to do. She cleans the gutters, repairs Leila's remote control car, puts Dani's new chair together, fixes the wiggly leg on Patrice's bed, and has just finished spackling the hole in the wall from the time Dani accidentally put her foot through it when she hears the kids come in. She finishes scrubbing her hands clean and comes out to greet them.

“Hi, Mom!” Leila chirps, and she and Patrice come to hug her. Dani is getting to the age where hugging her dom parent is too babyish, but she smiles.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah!” Patrice says, and goes into a pean to Chava's climbing skills. Faye is a bit alarmed when he tells her just how high in the tree they went, but all's well that ends well, and most of the time Chava had been holding onto him. Adan is apparently a sweet little sub like Patrice, and had been happy to play dolls with Leila. Dani had done some tree-climbing of her own and they had played tag, too, before going in to have an enormous salad for lunch. The kids don't usually go in for salad, but this had been a masterpiece, with avocado and a little chopped ham and egg and perfect cherry tomatoes.

On cue, Darrell comes in with the groceries, and they get to repeat the whole report as he gives them their tasks for the evening meal. Even Patrice is tasked to stir things, because it's never too early to start. Faye's father never let her mother teach her to cook because 'the girl will have a sub to do that' and she doesn't want the same nonsense to get anywhere near her children.

That night when she tucks Patrice into bed, they look over and see a light in the upstairs window across the street. A little girl is silhouetted against the light, and she waves. Patrice can wave back from his bed, and he does, grinning.

“I like Chava,” he says, after Faye has insisted on turning off the light and tucking him into bed.

She smiles. “That's good. You'll probably be in school together next year.”

“But she's older.”

“Yes, but she hasn't ever been to school.”

“Oh.” He snuggles down into the blankets. “I hope we're in the same class.”

“Me too,” Faye says, and presses a kiss to his forehead, going to the door and pausing to take in the scene. Patrice, cuddled up comfortably with Miss Jennifer (a stuffed tiger given to him days after his birth) his Paco the Friendly Jellyfish nightlight just suggesting the outlines of everything in the room with a soft, pink glow. Faye smiles, and shuts the door.


	5. Chapter 5

Adan yawns, nodding before snapping awake again. Even with years of good food and early bedtimes and safety, he and Chava are still trained. Phil smiles. “You know I'd wake you up the second she came in.”

“Yeah, I know, sir,” Adan says, yawning. “I still wanna wait up for her properly.”

“Good man,” Chava mutters, and slaps herself in the face, shaking her head and blinking, eyes wide, the whites glowing against her dark skin in the dim room. She turned fourteen this year, growing like the proverbial weed, long limbs getting longer every day. She's also becoming quite a beauty, and Clint has been placed on 'unworthy sub' duty. No pathetic types who can't do anything for themselves, and no passive-aggressive types who punish a dom for not being able to read their minds. Phil is on the lookout for bad doms going after Adan, but he has the feeling that Chava would eviscerate them before he got a chance.

“Thanks, Chava,” Adan says, yawning again and getting up, stretching his thick arms over his head. Chava has grown vertically, Adan horizontally. He's filling out into a heavy and square sort of man, and Phil is sure he'll be pretty damn strong when he reaches his prime.

Phil is about to suggest another round of coffee if they're really determined, when Nick and Natasha come in. They're dressed like Mark and Elisabeth, but they're not fully back yet. Their children leaping up to greet them helps a lot, though, and Nick smiles as Adan slides to his knees, graceful and showy. Unlike Chava kneeling to Adan all those years ago, this is sincere but a little bit playful, and age-appropriate as well. Nick smiles and compliments Adan on his form, helping him up as Chava takes Natasha's coat and bag, moved by the same sort of impulse.

“How'd it go?” Phil asks, reheating the casserole Natasha left for dinner. He and the kids had only eaten about half of it, and he can tell his friends need something substantial.

“We snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and I am fucking exhausted,” Natasha says, yawning and swaying a little. Nick smiles and sits down at the kitchen table, gesturing for Natasha to kneel at his feet. Chava scampers away and comes back with a cushion. They both thank her, and Natasha kneels on it, sighing and resting her head on Nick's knee.

The kids are of an age to gag and threaten to flee the room when their father starts hand-feeding their mother, so Phil just laughs when they do. Nick snorts and leans down to kiss Natasha between bites, making the kids gag even more theatrically.

“When you're old and married you'll understand, children,” Nick says, laughing at their noises of derision. Natasha just purrs, taking a moment to nuzzle his thigh. Phil laughs and pours himself more coffee, smiling when he gets a text from Clint.

_hey boss. u good?_

_Quite good_ Phil texts back, _And Mark and Elisabeth just got here._ He finishes his coffee before Clint's reply comes in.

_cool. im still pretty keyed up. can i come get you?_

_Sure. You know the kids would be glad to see you.._

The rest of the team generally stays clear of this address, but it's pitch black outside and Phil misses his boy. He has been here for days while the Avengers chase down the latest megalomaniac, and if Clint wants to drive all this way, Phil isn't going to argue.

“Clint's coming to get me,” he mentions to the room at large, and Chava applauds while Adan just beams. The house isn't really anywhere near the tower, but it's still close enough for Natasha to be able to respond to a call to assemble within a reasonable degree of time. Clint reaches it in forty minutes, latching onto Phil like a limpet once the door is closed behind him.

“Mm, Philsmell,” he coos, breathing in at the crook of Phil's neck. 

Phil chuckles.“We're glad you approve.”

A moment later, Clint pulls away to hug the kids and Natasha. He has mostly forgiven Nick for not telling him that Phil was alive after the Chitauri attack, but Nick has never been a particularly huggable person. They shake hands instead, and Adan serves Clint some casserole as Chava opens a beer for him and they both chatter away about school and neighborhood events. He listens attentively, and walks them up to their rooms when they start to droop again. That done, Phil and Clint head out to the car, leaving everyone to get some rest.

Clint likes to drive, and Phil is happy to settle into the shotgun seat. He loves Chava and Adan, but parenting a pair of teenagers for the past ten days or so has been a bit wearing.

Back at the tower, they strip down and curl up together in bed, Clint snuggling up over Phil's heart and kissing the spear scar the way he almost always does. Phil sighs, petting him and murmuring sleepily about what a sweet boy he is.

“Mm. Love you, master.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

“Every time I see the kids, I think about how good you are to me,” Clint whispers.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. 'Cause they remind me of how much the right care can help.”

Phil hugs Clint tightly, kissing the top of his head. “You've worked hard, sweet boy. You've worked very hard and so have they. We just helped.”

Clint makes a soft, helpless sound, and shivers, clinging to Phil. “Thank you, master.”

“Such a good boy always deserves praise,” Phil says softly, and Clint coos, melting against him as Phil rubs soothing circles on his back. Phil smiles, and murmurs his near-endless list of Clint's perfections, holding him and soothing him down to sleep. “My precious boy,” he murmurs almost too low to hear, and Clint smiles and purrs, cuddling into Phil, a warm, trusting weight that Phil is honored to bear.


End file.
